Tarpaulins from the Metropolis of Lyon suspend the use of emergency helicopters: a hiccup quickly corrected

The incident gained media attention with an alert launched by Dr. Fadi Farhat, cardiovascular surgeon via LinkedIn. The latter denounced a risk linked to the plastic sheeting placed on the land adjacent to the helipad shared between the Protestant Infirmary of Caluire and the Croix-Rousse hospital. A facility that he said threatened the safety of emergency landings, necessitating the temporary suspension of this crucial infrastructure. “The Metropolis has taken the initiative of establishing a plantation area protected by large unsecured plastic sheets which can endanger any helicopter approach (risk of these plastic sheets reaching the helicopter during movements)”, he explained. “In close collaboration with the SAMU du Rhône, the Protestant Infirmary of Caluire has taken the decision to temporarily suspend all use of our helipad from this day forward.”

Faced with the concern, Bruno Bernard, president of the Métropole de Lyon, responded on the same social network to clarify the intentions behind these developments. According to him, the work aimed to prepare the ground for the creation of urban afforestation, taking into account the safety zone around the helipad. However, the detail regarding the use of plastic sheeting had not been discussed in depth. “We received a request concerning the risk that this tarpaulin could represent and it was decided to have this tarpaulin removed over the entire surface so as not to take any risk with regard to the devices in the event of tearing and damage. lifting by force of helicopter rotors.”he said.

Nicolas Caquot, general director of the Protestant Infirmary, wanted to be reassuring this Thursday by explaining that “the helipad is now fully functional”welcoming the responsiveness of the Metropolis teams to remedy this disruption. “There was no problem with medical care in any case”, assures the director.

This inconvenience nevertheless did not fail to provoke a reaction from certain elected officials including Bastien Joint, municipal councilor in Caluire-et-Cuire. “My arms dropped when I saw this post”, he declared, recalling the vital importance of this infrastructure. The latter wanted to specify, “I inquired with a certain number of people who carry out reforestation on a certain number of sites, they explained to me that these tarpaulins a priori were really of no use. A priori, among a certain number of service providers who work with the Metropolis, it is rather a popular technique which considerably inflates the budgets allocated to this type of project.”